Paradox
by cantalyne
Summary: **UPDATED! no, really!**yes, it's here - the sequel to 'Behind.' you know you want to read it! amalthea and koshayn return to the forest and discover the ultimate paradox... lir cant leave well enough alone.
1. 1

Hi! Yes, thou hath done it - I have begun the sequel to everyone's favorite TLU fanfic (hey! stop laughing!), "Behind." Read that first, or else this will make little sense. If I get enough reviews, this story -will- be continued... and let me tell you, once again this is a story that defies convention. ^_- In the immortal words of Adam Carolla, enjoy!

It hurt.

It hurt so badly, hurt like a falcon had seized her heart and devoured its loving flames. Snow. There was snow in her forest. How could her world descend into cold? She had thought there was constancy in this final shred of her past, and yet here were the trees buckling under the weight of ice and shivering in the chill wind. 

It hurt her so.

In her mind's eye, she saw the deer and birds and squirrels are staring at her accusingly. You left us, they said, and look what it has done to us. Hunted, cold, lonely... I know how you feel! she answered them wildly, but they were merciless. She took her first life-giving step into the forest.

Nothing happened. It was not spring. She screamed and fell.

She awoke, and it was all a dream. She knew it was, for the air carressed her with its warm embrace, bringing the sweet smell of apple blossoms and fresh flowers. She could hear the clear, bubbling sound of a nearby stream, flowing about rocks, not frozen around them. A soft-eyed little doe gave her a gentle look and leapt away. It _was_ spring. It _was_, it _was_, it _was_. 

He touched her cheek with his horn, the tip lovingly tracing the contours of her cheek. "Amalthea," he said, and that hurt too. _That_ part wasn't a dream. "Are you all right?"

She lifted her head from the ground; it felt so heavy. "Koshayn." She did not answer, merely stated his name as if she were placing him in her mind. He had come with her after he disbanded the unicorn herd. He had finally understood, and he had seperated them. Regardless of what had bonded them in the wave foam, the unicorn had to try to become... itself... again. And so now, to each his own forest, excepting mates. And Koshayn had returned to her forest with her.

Slowly he nodded and folded his legs neatly beneath him to lay beside her. "I am here," he reassured her. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Spring," she voiced, still not replying. "It is spring. It is spring..."

The look he gave was worried, and the falcon squeezed its claws around her broken, bleeding heart. "Amalthea. Stand." He nudged her gently until she rose, thin bones in the fragile state possessed by a glass when it hangs in the air, just before it smashes against the unforgiving floor. He led her out of the forest, and in the moment they left, she felt the frost coming.

"Amalthea." He ordered, and she obeyed. It was always that way. "Step into the forest. And I forbid you to faint." Humorlessly.

Her hoofbeats echoed on hardened ground; she stepped silently through the underbrush, and the still air was winter, her white coat a harbinger of snow. She didn't understand. She couldn't understand. She _wouldn't_ understand. 

And then he was beside her, and it was spring again. 

"So it is you," she said, both accusation and horror in her voice. Her alabaster body had no effect on the forest - his did. He was a unicorn, and she was partly something else. She knew that; had known that for quite some time. And yet... she didn't know she had lost so much of herself. Would she... could she die? And if she did, would her body follow her to her grave, or would her soul leave the empty cadaver to propel itself in paradox, a living ghost?

He softly nudged her neck. "Come, heart. Come to the stream and drink." He touched his horn to clear waters flowing in a series of neverending sunlit drops over glistening rocks, and his horn made purifying rainbows. She extended her neck and sipped delicately, but the liquid left a revolting taste in her mouth. 

She stepped away with the light feet of a cat, the soft frog of each hoof absorbing the shock as it touched the ground. There was nothing to absorb the shock when Lir walked on stone...


	2. 2

And so the echo of his footsteps reverberated through the tiny tower room. Agitated hands, long and slender, crept like white moss over the stone window's edge and gripped tightly. The view nearly drove him mad: foam-capped peaks crested the curve of the azure waves that crashed with a slap and a spray on a jagged beach, darkening the congealed sand. The smell of salt and seagulls permeated his nose; the combined effect almost instigated a frenzy.

"Schmendrick!"

He came almost immediately, bowing in that silly way of his, cap almost falling off and robe flapping idly in the sea breeze. "King Lir... How may I be of service to you?"

His golden hair had paled to strands of iridescent sunbeams, his features had sharpened, and his voice, when he spoke, was rich with weariness. "It's no good, Schmendrick, my friend. You must bring me to her, and change her back. She will, I know it; how could I feel want this strong with her wanting it, too? You must do this. The magic will do as it will."

Schmendrick did not answer for a moment filled with breaking waves and silent harpy's cries. And then...

_"Still I have read, or heard it sung  
That unicorns, when time was young  
Could tell the difference twixt the two:  
The false shining and the true,   
the lips' laugh and the heart's rue._

"I don't need the unicorn to tell of your heart's rue. Yet are you sure, my prince, you would take her body away from her?"

The reply was fierce. "I would take nothing away from her she wished to keep, and would give her nothing she would not delight in the having of."

"Lir, Lir... haven't we gone over this before, so many, many times? As a human she was always a unicorn: it was a unicorn you loved and a unicorn that loved you. A divine creature in any form, but she could feel her human body dying all around her. Doubtless she loves you... but..." The sentence hung midair, near as tangible as if it were ink on parchment.

"I have made my decision." Tight words, tight and demanding and resolute. "Do you not think I haven't already reflected upon all of these facts? I know that as a mortal, she is... mortal. But I need her, and she needs me. And we need you, to help us. Please, Schmendrick. You're the only chance we have." 

Schmendrick was again silent for so long as to cause his monarch irate agonies. "No other girls," he said, finally, slowly, "could ever equal a unicorn... I will find her, and I will meet with her... but I make no guarentees as to the final outcome." 

The lack of enthusiasm did not seem to bother Lir, and his pale face warmed up with a small leer before easing itself into a creaky grin. "Excellent, Schmendrick, my man. I knew I could count on you. We shall - "

At this point Molly chose to make her appearance. "I demand to know what you are planning to do to the poor creature," the woman said firmly as she strode into the room, obviously unperturbed by her blatant eavesdropping. 

Lir did not seem to have any qualms for his part. "My magician shall change her back for me, because it is our will."

Large eyes went wide and sad, or angry, or both. "But you cannot! She is a unicorn! I understand you love her, but please, for the love of all things sacred, leave her in peace! She is gone now, please, please..." She was almost crying with her sense of urgency: her heart told her _she must not change back._

But the king was stalking out already, cold eyes crashing against her, paralleling waves and sand. "Foolish woman... you don't understand." Schmendrick touched the back of Molly's hand, but reluctantly followed him out.

Molly Grue narrowed her eyes obstinately. She was a woman with a strong sense of purpose, and it took little time for her to come to a decision: she was following them. 


	3. 3

She dropped her head, her seashell horn dragging designs in the dirt of no purpose, no importance. If she dug into the soft ground hard enough, flipped her head backwards fast enough, the tip of the horn would break off, interred forever in the lilac wood; but what good would it do? She was too mortal to make spring come again. Her head was heavy and her joints felt old.

Her knees slowly folded beneath her, and her body followed, and now she watched the horn fall into the water. The water split around it into a kalideoscope of color and the subtle sounds of flowing liquid. When the forest moved, the water rippled. Squirrel eating an acorn: ripple. Petal falling from a flower: ripple. A smell wafting through the air: ripple. The pounding of hoofbeats on the road: ripple...

"Lir."

He was coming.

Did she want him to?

Lir knew she was nearby, knew with as much certainly as if she stood before him now, nebulous mane descending in an alabaster cloud over her slender neck. He had been impatient and snappish throughout the entire journey, directing Schmendrick as a spoiled child might any normal servant. Well, now she was in a clearing nearby.

A unicorn blocked the path.

Not his unicorn; not his Amalthea. He didn't know how he knew, but he did: the tiny differences in height, in muscle, in breadth of clear eyes, in the way the sun streaming through gossamer leaves of a weeping willow bounced off the horn in rainbow hue. "Where is Amalthea?" fretted Lir, too high-stung, almost a parallel to his formal self, that killed dragons and only read of unicorns.

The unicorn spoke unto them, and the voice was definitely male: "She has told me the story. What makes you think she would see you?"

Lir was busy sorting out the significance of his beloved Amalthea having a male companion, so Schmendrick took it upon himself to reply. "Story. Who are you? How do you know who we are?"

"Because he's a unicorn," announced Molly Grue, surprising no one as Lir was too preoccupied and Schmendrick knew Molly too well to expect her to stay behind. "He knows. Leave her alone, Schmendrick; can't you see she has found a love at last?"

"She has a love!" roared Lir, shaking his fist, but not at the stallion, but at the sun, and he stared at the glowing orb unblinking. "She has one, and she does not need another! She will see me!"

"My name," said the unicorn to Molly, recognizing her as the only salvageable human in evidence, "is Koshayn. The unicorn Amalthea - "

"I will see him," came a quiet voice, a voice heavy with wisdom, and regret. And there she was before him in all her splendid glory, the creature of legends stuffed into a cruel reality, with lilacs in her eyes and in her tail. "Hello... Lir."

Koshayn switched his tail but maintained his calm demeanor. "You will not lay a hand on her," was his stern warning as Lir reached to stroke her nose, and to the shock of everyone present, she pulled away of her own accord.

"Why?" screamed Lir in the cracked whisper of a man near broken, "why do you shrink from me? You love me still; I feel you love me! You care nothing for this Koshayn - " he spat the word with contempt " - so let Schmendrick change you back, so that you may be happy!"

She looked at Schmendrick; he said, "I will do as you wish, my lady."

And she said this: "The part of me that is mortal loves you still. The part of me that is immortal loves you but understands that you are but a mayfly to me, and Koshayn is of my own blood. A unicorn's love is not a light thing; this you know. Two unicorns in a lilac wood..." She trailed into silence.

"What do you want?" breathed Molly, resisting the urge to run to her, to warm her cold hands on the fire of neverending life.

"I want... I want..." She didn't know. She didn't know.

"You want to be human!"

And Lir lunged at Schmendrick and caught the bungling magician by the cape; a knife flashed into existence, pressed against the man's throat. "Say the spell or die!"

"Lir, you are mad," quivered Amalthea, her breath coming in short gasps, "you are not the Lir I know!"

"No!" he cried in anguish, watching a rivelet of blood trickle like a man mesmerized even as he spoke. "I am not the Lir you know, because I am not Lir without Amalthea! Damn you, magician, _say the spell_ or we shall both perish in a pool of blood."

"Rather melodramatic," said a passing butterfly, "don't you think?"

Schmendrick studied lir. He glanced at Molly. He looked at Koshayn. He gazed deep into the eyes of the unicorn herself.

He knew what to do.

"Magic!" he yelled into the sorcerous winds, "do... as... _SHE_ WILL!"

And the magic rushed out the Schmendrick's fingers

and it spun in with visible, near tangible beauty about her body

and it embraced her mind and sought her desire

and it could find no decision. How could she choose between the love and life she had had and new could never be, and the love and life she had now but that could not resist the temptation? So the magic reacted to the paradox in the only way it could.

And when the smoke cleared, and the dust parted, and natural light shone once more, there were two figures lying in the dust where once were one. 

One was a young woman.

The other was a unicorn.

To be continued? Hmmm, I don't know. Maybe I should end it here and let -you- try to figure out what happened... and what -will- happen... all depends on the reviews. ^_- i'm shameless, i know.


	4. 4

Two creatures lay in the lilac wood. Side by side they stretched out, stricken, virgin swan down that melted into one only to separate again out of respect for the shadows. One was a unicorn, and she was very beautiful even in stillness, the other a young woman, equally so. Neither moved, twitched, stirred.  
  
Lir could not help but touch her, never mind the cries of "Don't!" even as he reached for her--Amalthea, his own. So far gone was he that he couldn't even place the exact origin of the voices as he placed her head in his lap and rocked her gently, crooning soft urgings to please awaken.  
  
There is always another side to the coin, and on the side remaining was Koshayn. Gingerly he folded his delicate silver legs beneath his body, his nostrils quivering a heartbreaking rose pink as he nudged the comatose head of a mythical one-horned beast.  
  
Eyes opened.  
  
They were blue, and they were empty. They were alive, but they were expressionless, devoid of all emotion. A vacuum, a supernova, a black hole, sucking everything in and letting nothing escape.  
  
Molly knew. Schmendrick knew. Koshayn knew. The deer and rabbits and owls knew. Lir, even, in the back of his mind where his sanity still found room even in this climactic moment, knew that the magic had indeed done as she would. And she didn't know what she would.  
  
What could the magic do but split her into two beings? Amalthea and the unicorn could now live forked lives, the only logical conclusion that enchantment could derive from the fevered brain. But then the ultimate paradox: human enough to cry, unicorn enough to heal, the two could no longer be parted. The characteristics of each entity that was one existence were too intertwined for any one half to stand alone. All that could be left was a hollow shell of what once was, ghosts of memories flitting through troubled minds that could grasp and perhaps even understand but never speak.  
  
One thing both recognized at once, even when nothing else registered beyond a blur of painful colors.  
  
I cannot make it spring.  
  
  
  
  
The body of a unicorn lived by the stream, and Koshayn cared for her there.  
  
The form of a woman lived in a tower, and Lir cared for her there.  
  
That which was Amalthea liked to look at the water, and at the foam, because something was somehow familiar about a ripple or a small wave, and that was comforting.  
  
The sea filled an otherwise monotonous existence in which there was no conversation because there was no speech. The sea was never the same.  
  
  
End of Paradox  
  
  
  
  
  
  
yeah, yeah, that was long in coming. so... whatcha think? bad, good, so-so? should i run for a fire extinguisher and prepare to put out the flames? or should i get to work on the final section of the trilogy? ^_- that's right, i've an idea for a sequel to this sequel, one that would end -this- particular saga at the very least... we'll see. review? pleeeeeease? 


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